By
The Associated Press
OKLAHOMA CITY - The governor was considering a last-minute stay of execution for Wanda Jean Allen, who could become the first black woman put to death in the United States since 1954.
Allen, who killed a childhood friend in 1981 and a lover, seven years later, was scheduled to die by injection Thursday night, a day after a flurry of prayers, protests and legal wrangling.
Gov. Frank Keating, an ardent death penalty supporter, agreed to consider a stay based on the narrow issue of whether the state parole board knew enough about Allen's education, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Allen's attorneys have noted that she scored 69 on an IQ test she took in the 1970s and argued that the score is in the range of mental retardation.
Based on Allen's own trial testimony, prosecutors also told the parole board at the Dec. 15 clemency hearing that she had graduated from high school and received a medical assistant certificate from Rose State College.
Allen, 41, actually dropped out of high school at 16 and never finished course work in the medical assistant program.
The governor was meeting Thursday with Jesse Jackson and state Rep. Opio Toure, who were making a last-ditch case for her life.
Jackson and about two dozen other peaceful demonstrators were arrested for allegedly trespassing outside the prison where Allen was being held.
Jackson said he hoped Keating would stop the execution, but if not, he wanted to give her personal support.
"She must not die in the dark," Jackson said. "She must not die alone. We intend to be with her all the way."
A federal judge on Wednesday denied requests from Allen's attorneys for a stay of execution and for a new clemency hearing, and the attorneys announced they would immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Allen fatally shot childhood friend Detra Pettus during an argument, and spent two years in prison. Seven years later, she killed her lover, Gloria Leathers, whom she met while both were in prison.
The day Leathers died in 1988, the two were arguing in a grocery store. A witness said that Allen threatened to kill Leathers.
Leathers and her mother went to the police station to file a complaint, and Allen followed them, prosecutors said. Leathers was shot as she left the car.
Allen said recently she cared for Leathers and "loved her as a person."
"I even told her mom there's no greater love than a mother's love. ... I explained to her that I would want my mom to have the same compassion in her heart and come up here and forgive her."
Leathers' mother, Ruby Wilson, has said she doesn't hate Allen but hates what she did. "I will never forget it. I will always see it. That is in the past. I have to go on toward the future," Wilson said after meeting with Allen recently.
Forty-four women have been executed since 1900. The last execution of a black woman came in 1954, when Ohio electrocuted Betty Jean Butler.
The last woman executed was Christina Marie Riggs, 28, who was put to death in Arkansas last May for smothering her two young children.
Five women and 680 men have been executed since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a ban on capital punishment in 1976.
